--- The Kingdom of Mutapa ---
dopper0189 Black Kos Managing Editor
The Kingdom of Mutapa was a medieval kingdom which stretched between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers of southern Africa in the modern states of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Its founders are culturally and politically related to the builders who constructed the Great Zimbabwe (the image to the left).
This is the fourth in a series detailing ancient Africa's Empires. This week we take a break from the great kingdoms of West Africa, and look further south to see what other great civilizations were developing on the continent.
The origins of the ruling dynasty at Mutapa goes back to the first half of the 15th century. According to oral tradition, the first "mwene" was a warrior prince named Nyatsimba Mutota from the Kingdom of Zimbabwe sent to find new sources of salt in the north. Prince Mutota found his salt among the Tavara, a Shona subdivision, who were prominent elephant hunters. They were conquered, a capital was established 350 km north of Great Zimbabwe at Zvongombe by the Zambezi.
Mutota's successor, Matope, extended this new kingdom into a great empire encompassing most of the lands between Tavara and the Indian Ocean. The Mwenemutapa became very wealthy by exploiting copper from Chidzurgwe and ivory from the middle Zambezi. This expansion weakened the Torwa kingdom, the southern Shona state from which Mutota and his dynasty originated. Mwenemutapa Matope's armies overran the kingdom of the Manyika as well as the coastal kingdoms of Kiteve and Madanda. By the time the Portuguese arrived on the coast of Mozambique, the Mutapa Kingdom was the premier Shona state in the region.
Yaka Mask
The Mutapa Empire worshipped a supreme god called Mwari, the creator of the world and everything in it. The religion of the Mutapa kingdom revolved around ritual consultation of spirits and a cult of royal ancestors. During these ceremonies "Yaka mask" were worn. A central role in Shona-Karanga religion was played the mhondoro, the spirits of the ancestors of the ruling families. It was through these spirits that the Shona could talk to Mwari. Remembering the names of all the spirits and the task of calling on them in times of need was the responsibility of the nobles. Thus, the king of Mwene Mutapa played the role of high priest as well as acting as day-to-day ruler. The mhondoros also served as oral historians recording the names and deeds of past kings.
From roughly the 10th to the 18th century, Great Zimbabwe and the area of Central Africa around Lake Kisale (in present-day Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) were the region’s centres of production and intra-African trade. Beginning in at least the 1st millennium, however, people of this region traded with various non-Africans. The earliest and most important external trade link for Mozambique was with Middle Eastern and South Asian peoples who traded beads and cloth for gold across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
By the 14th century, African Arab, or Swahili, trade cities were flourishing along the coast from Somalia in the north to Kilwa in what is now southern Tanzania. Smaller Swahili sultanates developed along the northern coast of Mozambique as far south as Angoche. A series of markets had arisen throughout the region by the 16th century, sustained by intraregional trade in raw materials and long-distance trade in gold, copper, ivory, and slaves.
By 1515 The Portuguese dominated much of southeast Africa's coast, laying waste to Sofala and Kilwa. Their main goal was to dominate the trade with India; however, they unwittingly became mere carriers for luxury goods between Mutapa's sub-kingdoms and India. As the Portuguese settled along the coast, they made their way into the hinterland as sertanejos (backwoodsmen). These sertanejos lived alongside Swahili traders and even took up service among Shona kings as interpreters and political advisors. One such sertanejo managed to travel through almost all the Shona kingdoms, including Mutapa's metropolitican district, between 1512 and 1516.
The Portuguese finally entered into direct relations with the Mwenemutapa in the 1560s. They recorded a wealth of information about the Mutapa kingdom as well as its predecessor, Great Zimbabwe. According to Swahili traders whose accounts were recorded by the Portuguese historian João de Barros, Great Zimbabwe was an ancient capital city built of stones of marvellous size without the use of mortar. And while the site was not within Mutapa's borders, the Mwenemutapa kept noblemen and some of his wives there.
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which existed from 1270 to 1550 during the country’s Late Iron Age. The monument, which first began to be constructed in the 11th century and which continued to be built till the 14th century, spanned an area of 1,784 acres and at its peak could have housed up to 18,000 people. Great Zimbabwe acted as a royal palace for the Zimbabwean monarch and would have been used as the seat of their political power. One of its most prominent features were its walls, some of which were over five metres high and which were constructed without mortar.
Eventually, the city was largely abandoned, and fell into ruin, first being encountered by Europeans in the early 16th century. Investigation of the site first began in the 19th century, when the monument caused great controversy amongst the archaeological world, with political pressure being placed upon archaeologists by the then white supremacist government of Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) to deny that it could have ever been produced by native Zimbabweans. In this way archaeology and anthropology which in many ways were created to prove the superiority of the white race, began to undermine this myth. The Great Zimbabwe was one of the greatest strikes against the supremist mythology that would later be a leading factor in the development of Apartheid.
Overview of the Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe has since been adopted as a national monument by the Zimbabwean government, with the modern state being named after it when Rhodesia went to majority rule in 1980. It is also a UNESCO world heritage site. The word "Great" distinguishes the site from the many hundred small ruins, called Zimbabwes, spread across the Zimbabwe highveld (high prairies). There are 200 such sites in southern Africa, such as Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manekweni in Mozambique (which is now in a national park), with monumental, mortarless walls. Great Zimbabwe is the largest.
Bumbusi Manekweni
In 1569, Sebastian of Portugal made a grant of arms to the Mwenemutapa. These were blazoned: Gules between two arrows Argent an african hoe barwise bladed Or handled Argent - The shield surmounted by a Crown Oriental. This was probably the first grant of arms to a native of southern Africa; however it is unlikely that these arms were ever actually used by the Mwenemutapa.
In 1561, Gonçalo da Silveira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary managed to make his way into the Mwenemutapa's court and convert him to Christianity. This did not go well with the Muslim merchants in the capital, and they persuaded the king to kill the Jesuit only a few days after the former's baptism. This was all the excuse the Portuguese needed to penetrate the interior and take control of the gold mines and ivory routes. After a lengthy preparation, an expedition of 1,000 men under Francisco Barreto was launched in 1568. They managed to get as far as the upper Zambezi, but local disease decimated the force. The Portuguese returned to their base in 1572 and took their frustrations out on the Swahili traders, whom they massacred. They replaced them with Portuguese and their half-African progeny who became prazeiros (estate holders) of the lower Zambezi. Mutapa maintained a position of strength exacting a subsidy from each Portuguese captain of Mozambique that took the office. The mwenemutapa also levied a duty of 50 percent on all trade goods imported.
Mutapa proved invulnerable to attack and even economic manipulation due to the mwenemutapa's strong control over gold production.[11] What posed the greatest threat was infighting among different factions which led to opposing sides calling on the Portuguese for military aid.
In 1629 the mwenemutapa attempted to throw out the Portuguese. He failed and was overthrown, leading to the Portuguese installation of Mavura Mhande Felipe on the throne. Mutapa signed treaties making it a Portuguese vassal and ceding gold mines, but none of these concessions were ever put into effect. Mutapa remained nominally independent, though practically a client state. All the while, Portugal increased control over much of southeast Africa with the beginnings of a colonial system.
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*** SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS ***
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Black Kos editors Deoliver47 and dopper0189 will be participating in the panel, Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere at Netroots Nation 2010. Along with Black Kos family member shanikka. Rounding out the group will be TexMex and navajo of the Native American Netroots. We will be on at 4:30 PM on Friday July 23rd. We hope to meet everyone who is going there.
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This is nice to see. Jamaican Observer: Bartlett to woo African American hotel owners and developers to Jamaica
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MINISTER of Tourism Edmund Bartlett will be attempting to attract more investment in the tourism sector when he addresses the 14th annual International African American Hotel Ownership and Investment Summit and Trade Show slated for the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami, Florida on July 21-24.
The four-day event is organised by the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers (NABHOOD) under the theme: "Creating new opportunities" and is expected to explore African American hotel ownership, public/private partnerships, financing, franchising, investment opportunities and employment and supplier opportunities.
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This is a popular myth, yes haiti does have an AIDS issue, but issue with Haitian immigrants isn't as high as popular though thinks it is. Orlando Sentinal: Study: Haitians don’t have higher AIDS rates than African-Americans
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Challenging the prevailing wisdom that Haitian immigrants have higher rates of AIDS than other groups, a new study has found that the AIDS rate among Haitian immigrants in the United States is similar to the rate for African-Americans.
The study, which was published online by AIDS and titled "HIV among Haitian-born persons in the United States, 1985-2007," is the first to report on HIV surveillance and AIDS trends for Haitians compared to the U.S. population and African-Americans.
The study was a collaboration between researchers from Harvard Medical School, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard-affiliated health system.
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The first black scholar admitted to the National Academy of Sciences dies at 91. New York Times: David Blackwell: Groundbreaking Statistician and Mathematician Dies.
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Renowned statistician and mathematician David Blackwell has passed away at the age of 91. Blackwell was the first African American admitted to the National Academy of Sciences and the first black tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his work in probability and game theory. Blackwell attended the University of Illinois and received a Rosenwald Fellowship. He attended Princeton but left after he was denied the opportunity to teach at the university, as was customary for fellows there, because he was black. He was denied the chance to teach at UC Berkeley for the same reason. After brief stints at Southern University and Clark College in Atlanta, he went on to teach at Howard University. While a professor at Howard, Blackwell co-authored Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions (1954) with famed statistician Meyer A. Girshick. He served as a consultant for the Rand Corporation, applying game theory to military situations. His Basic Statistics (1969) was one of the first textbooks on Bayesian statistics, which assess the uncertainty of future outcomes by incorporating new evidence as it arises, rather than relying on historical data. He later became a professor at UC Berkeley, chairing the department and becoming the school's first black tenured professor.
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Never mind all the sound and fury over black academic performance. The data aren't so clear-cut. The Root: The Myth of 'Acting White' and the Achievement Gap
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Even broaching the topic of "acting white" is the prelude to a fight. Those two small words are imbued with so much meaning within the black community. Is it racial policing and self-sabotage that ultimately lead to underachievement? Or is it just a racialized form of bullying? While what activities lead to the charge vary, the discussions around "acting white" revolve around attitudes that disparage excelling in school. In 2004 Barack Obama spoke against the charge of ''acting white'' at the Democratic National Convention; later, when he ran for president, he was accused of sounding and ''talking white'' by his political peers.
This ongoing debate was pushed back into the spotlight with the publication of Stuart Buck's new book, Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. Buck, a white adoptive parent of two black children, became interested in the term and used one major question to guide his research: ''How on earth did an instrument of segregationist oppression become transformed into something that many black school-children now say to each other??''
However, outside of personal anecdotes, the actual data linking the idea of "acting white" and academic underachievement are murky at best. Buck's book looks at the term in the context of desegregation; but a better view may come from Harvard's Roland J. Fryer Jr. Fryer, an African-American scholar and academic phenomenon, followed a fairly unorthodox path to Harvard University. (His extended family ran a major crack gang in Florida.) Now in the position to examine social forces that impact African Americans, Fryer brings both intellectual rigor and personal experience to his studies
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Mail and Guardian: South Africans mark Mandela's birthday
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The so-called "goodwill games" were among activities around the world marking Mandela Day, which falls on Mandela's July 18 birthday and was conceived as an international day devoted to public service. Community leaders in Atteridgeville organised the unity-building tournament of teams of South Africans, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Somalis who all live in this poor, black neighbourhood on the western edge of South Africa's capital.
Mandela, who turned 92 years old on Sunday and is largely retired from public life, was spending the day with his family in Johannesburg. Early on Sunday, his wife went to an orphanage in Soweto to help plant a vegetable garden.
"Today is an opportunity for millions of people around the world to look inside themselves and find those beautiful qualities as any human being has and say: 'I am able to make a difference to my neighbour, to someone underprivileged, I can extend my goodness to other people,"' Graça Machel said on Sunday.
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Genealogist and peonage researcher produces documentary entitled "The Untold Story: Slavery In The 20th Century". Black News: Those Left Behind...Slaves In The 20th & 21st Century
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For ten years Antoinette Harrell, renowned genealogist and television talk show producer, has unearthed thousands of state and federal documents relating to peonage. Peonage in the Southern States grew out of labor settlements following the emancipation of the slaves. At the end of the Civil War, both Black and White people throughout the south faced enormous political, social and economic changes. In the southern states, many newly freed slaves remained on plantations. Many of the plantations were still in the hands of previous owners. As Freedmen, the ex-slaves agreed to work the crops in exchange for housing, a percentage of crops, and to receive a salary. Under the provisions enacted by the state legislature, legal contracts were drawn up and signed by both planter and labor. Overseeing these agreements were agents from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a government agency established to assist Freedmen in the aftermath of emancipation. The Freedmen, being unable to read or write, had to make their mark. Children as young as five years old had their mark made. It is reasonable to believe that plantation owners also forged their marks.
Ten years ago, Harrell conducted a genealogy and reparations lecture in Amite, Louisiana, at All Nations Church. A woman named Mae Louise Miller walked in and stated that she and her family had been held as slaves in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Harrell didn't doubt Mae's life story. She had met other people in St. John Parish, Louisiana, who spoke of slavery and Involuntary Servitude on plantations in St. John Parish in the 20th Century. Many of the people Harrell met were afraid to speak out. They were afraid of what would happen to them if they told anyone that they had been slaves and peons in the 20th century. Some of the people she talked with couldn't read or write in the 21st century. Like Mae, some of them thought that everyone was living in the same conditions. Most importantly, they didn't believe that anyone would believe them.
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Vernon Baker recounted how black soldiers fought for a country that didn't appreciate them in his memoir. Wyoming News: Cheyenne residents recall life of heroic Buffalo Soldier.
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Cheyenne native, World War II veteran and Medal of Honor winner Vernon J. Baker died Tuesday at his home in St. Maries, Idaho. He was 90.
In 1997, Baker became the first living black WWII veteran, a Buffalo Soldier, to receive the Medal of Honor. He was one of seven black soldiers to receive it, the other six posthumously.
According to the Associated Press and Baker's own memoir, Lasting Valor, published in 1997, he and 54 other soldiers were near enemy lines in Italy on April 5, 1945. When enemy fire prevented the company's advance, Baker crawled to one of the machine gun emplacements and destroyed it, killing three Germans. He then attacked an enemy observation post and killed two others.
In total, Baker and his platoon killed 26 Germans and destroyed six machine guns nests, two observer posts and four dugouts.
For his actions, he received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Cross. He was one of the most decorated black soldiers who fought in that part of the world.
But a study done in the 1990s found that black soldiers were unfairly denied the Medal of Honor, and that Baker was among those deserving of the award.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
The Nigerian Poet, Playwright, Actor and Political Activist, Wole Soyinka, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986; the first African writer to be so recognized. Though much of his early work satirized the absurdities of his society with gentle humor and an affectionate spirit; as the struggle for independence in Nigeria turned sour, Soyinka's work took on a darker tone. One such example is a conversation between two adversaries who are often pitted against each other, two adversaries who, in the heat of battle, believe one is the master of the other, yet each are one and the same; and so Soyinka offers us a discussion between a...
Civilian and Soldier
My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.
You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of your traning sessions, cautioning -
Scorch earth behind you, do not leave
A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration
Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth
From the lead festival of your more eager friends
Worked the worse on your confusion, and when
You brought the gun to bear on me, and death
Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight
And all of you came clear to me.
I hope some day
Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked
In stride by your apparition in a trench,
Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then
But I shall shoot you clean and fair
With meat and bread, a gourd of wine
A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that
Lone question - do you friend, even now, know
What it is all about?
-- Wole Soyinka
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